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High-temperature superconductors hold much promise but are troublesome beasts.

Our brains seem to be finely tuned to music, but of what use are our musical powers and passions?

On the evidence of Nature's recent conference in Tokyo, technologies at the nanometre scale are now within reach. But how are they to be realized, and what form will they take?

In recent years, ecologists and economists have learned the importance of working together. But the alliance has at times been rocky, particularly as there is no consensus on how cooperation is most effectively achieved.

For those — such as Californians — who live at plate boundaries, earthquakes are a fact of life. Others, who may count themselves lucky, should think again.

Overspecialization in science is a bane of the times, but a meeting last week showed the benefits to be had from reversing the trend.

Part 4: A very public humiliation.

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The US government is to use high temperature superconducting cables to replace existing underground copper cables in an electricity substation in Detroit.

[WASHINGTON]The library at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado, has issued a plea for help from the academic community as it tries to recover from a flash flood that devastated its collection.

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A coalition of North American university libraries is planning to launch a bid to reduce the power of commercial scholarly publishers.

Genome sequencing alone fails to provide a genetic diagnosis for many Mendelian disorder patients. Here, the authors utilize RNA sequencing to complement genotyping of patients with a rare mitochondrial disease by detecting aberrant RNA expression, splicing and allele-specific expression.

A cloud of dust fills the inner Solar System, produced mainly by comets and colliding asteroids. Tiny samples of this dust are collected by aircraft flying in the Earth's stratosphere, and used as a probe of extraterrestrial chemistry. What has been missing is a knowledge of the specific parent body of a given dust grain. But one sample of interplanetary dust, collected in June and July 1991, has now been traced to a particular comet, called Schwassmann-Wachmann 3. The detective-work used, if proved sound, will also allow other comets to be sampled.

[WASHINGTON]Fears of a shortage of money to hire young scientists are claimed to lie behind a decision to move the US Geological Survey's western headquarters from Menlo Park, California, to a site outside San Francisco Bay.

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The administration of Mexico's President Ernesto Zedillo is seeking a wide-ranging overhaul of the way in which public funding for research is allocated and administered.

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Leading US research universities are to set up new institutes that will enable physical and biomedical scientists to work collaboratively.

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Scientific researchers should have open access to data collected for the purpose of monitoring the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, according to a panel of the US National Research Council.